Friday, April 6, 2012

Upsets were the order of the day in the men's singles semi-finals at the XXV Pan American Championships in Temuco, Chile, as Canadian Mike Green and Ecuadoran Fernando Rios advanced to Saturday's final. It's the first final for any Ecuador men's player, let alone Rios, and the first Pan Am Championship final for Green since 1999, when he won it defeating fellow Canadian Sherman Greenfeld.

In the semi-finals, Green knocked off top seed and defending Pan Am Champion Daniel De La Rosa of Mexico in a long match where the players fought the court conditions as well as each other before Green came out on top 15-11, 14-15, 11-7.

In game one, they were close all the way, with Green holding a slight advantage until they got to doubles digits, when De La Rosa went ahead 11-10. But that was all Green let him have as the veteran got the last five points to end the game and go up 1-0 in the match.

Green drove serve in game one but in game two he switched to lob serving. Again it was close early in game two, but then Green opened up a lead at 9-4, and 12-7. But De La Rosa dug in and fought his way back and took the lead late in the game at 14-12.

It appeared that De La Rosa had won the game at 15-12, but Green successfully appealed a call - we believe it was for a wet ball, as the court conditions were quite poor with both players slipping on several occasions in the match - and got the serve back.

De La Rosa had more tries to win game two, but Green fought them off and leveled the score at 14-14, when De La Rosa got the serve back. The ensuing rally ended with De La Rosa hitting a ball to the front left corner that the referee called a skip, but this time it was De La Rosa's turn to make an appeal, which was successful and forced game three.

In game three, Green took a big lead right off the hop at 5-0, and then pushed it further to 9-0, as De La Rosa seemed to have used so much energy - physical and psychological - to win game two that he hadn't recovered enough between games.

But the defending champ did fight back and certainly made Green nervous as the score closed to 10-7. At that point Green played a pinch shot into the front left corner that shot over to the right side. De La Rosa tried to go for it from his center court position, but slipped and went down hard on his right elbow.

After several minutes and some medical attention, De La Rosa was able to continue, but Green finished it off with a lob z serve to the right side - his first of the match - that led to a winning pinch shot into the front left corner.

There was the possibility of an all Canadian final in men's singles, as Green's team-mate Vincent Gagnon was playing Rios in the other semi-final, but Rios had other ideas, defeating Gagnon 15-12, 15-12.

Though Rios had a slight advantage for most of game one, they were tied at 8-8 and Gagnon did go ahead 10-9, but that was his only lead late in the game, as Rios came back to win 15-12.

Gagnon led early in game two at 4-0, as well as 8-4 and 12-8. But Rios worked his way back into the game and didn't allow Gagnon to score another point as he went on to win the match in two straight games.

The men's singles finals will be Saturday at 11 AM, which is one hour ahead of EDT. The final will streamed live by the Pan American Racquetball Confederation (PARC) via their website.